Blake Shelton - Original Album Series (2012) 5CD Box Set

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Blake Shelton - Original Album Series (2012) 5CD Box Set

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This 2012 box set rounds up Blake Shelton's first five albums – Blake Shelton, The Dreamer, Blake Shelton's Barn & Grill, Pure BS, and Startin' Fires – presenting them as mini-LPs in a slipcase. There are no bonus tracks but this is an easy, affordable, and handsome way to get Shelton's prime.

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com

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Blake Shelton - Original Album Series (2012) 5CD Box Set

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Blake Shelton - Original Album Series (2012) 5CD Box Set

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This impressive ten-song compilation is an earnest debut full of lots of promise and originality. Shelton delivers a wealth of traditional country music in its most honest-to-goodness form, with his young, delightful cowboy-esque charm. The Oklahoma-bred Shelton sure can fire off a tune with the sincerest tenacity. Notables include "Austin," a tremendously imaginative song about getting back together with someone by leaving messages for one another on their answering machines; "I Thought There Was Time" about neglecting a relationship; and "Same Old Song" about an artist looking for some originality in country music today. Along with producer Bobby Braddock ("He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "D-I-V-O-R-C-E") and Shelton's "all-time musical hero," writer Earle Thomas Conley, the cast is rounded out on an album destined for musical greatness.

Maria Konicki Dinoia, Allmusic.com

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Blake Shelton - Original Album Series (2012) 5CD Box Set

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Rough, rawboned energy drives Blake Shelton's sophomore release, but it's not quite enough to distract from its brevity or the fact that the young singer would benefit from a little more seasoning. His vocal technique is fine, and his willingness to tackle a lyric is admirable; the problem lies more with the material, which represents the doldrum state of songwriting in music city. The story told by "The Baby," for instance, has been told more than a few times: basically it's "My mom is dead." But whether presented tongue-in-cheek, as in the Commander Cody trucker lament "Mama Hated Diesels," or as poetry, which Merle Haggard achieves in "Mama Tried," there's something less formulaic in the older tunes. The same applies throughout The Dreamer, which explains why Shelton is at his strongest on the least-ambitious material, such as "Playboys of the Southwestern World," a rowdy collision of "Brown Eyed Girl" and "American Pie," sung with a mischievous twist that suggests, at times, Bruce Springsteen with a corn liquor hangover. None of the drawbacks of The Dreamer suggest any reason for pessimism about Shelton's prospects; there's nothing here that an escape from music row wouldn't cure.

Robert L. Doerschuk, Allmusic.com

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Blake Shelton - Original Album Series (2012) 5CD Box Set

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Although he's delivered two promising albums, country singer Blake Shelton has had a bit of problem finding his own voice. On his first record, he was a hardcore country singer and on his second, 2003's The Dreamer, he tempered his country with anthemic heartland rock and contemporary Nashville songcraft. His third album, 2004's Blake Shelton's Barn & Grill, finds a happy medium between the two extremes. While he can still delve a little too deeply into country corn – especially on the ballads – he finds a happy balance between Nashville craft and pure country, throwing a bit of everyman charm and a little of Kenny Chesney's Jimmy Buffett fixation into the mix as well. All of this makes Shelton a bit of an all-purpose contemporary country singer – he can do it all from the honky tonk ("Cotton Pickin' Time") to the beach ("Some Beach") and everywhere in between – but since most of Barn & Grill has its heart in hardcore country, it winds up as his best, most assured album to date.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com

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Blake Shelton - Original Album Series (2012) 5CD Box Set

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With Pure BS, Blake Shelton proves he is one of the country music artists who are in it for the long haul and cannot rest on his laurels. From the cover photo to the last track the listener can easily be startled by what is on offer here. As his first three albums showcased, Shelton has always had a powerful baritone range and can write and sing drinking, heartbreak, and driving songs all night. Working with producer Bobby Braddock, Shelton forged a sound that showcased him as a country music hell raiser who had a tender side, but he did it all with one voice. On Pure BS (a great double entendre), Shelton worked not only with Braddock, but with producers Paul Worley and Brent Rowan as well. What the sum total of these 11 songs reveals is that Shelton is really and truly a singer of modern country music. The opener is a Southern rocker with napalm guitars called "This Can't Be Good" (a tale with a humorous twist). It's the Shelton everyone knows, but he reaches for notes he hasn't hit before. "The More I Drink" is one of the first sobriety songs since Ray Wylie Hubbard's classic "Hey, That's Alright" to actually make sense even as it makes the listener laugh. (It's interesting that they are both from small towns in Oklahoma) Then there's the bittersweet "I Don't Care," with steel guitars and strings, where Shelton digs deep into the heart of his voice where searing honesty, even as it begins in lying to oneself, comes to the fore as he digs deeper into the lyric than he ever has before, and yes, that's saying something. "Back There Again" is the most haunting and moving loving and leaving songs Shelton's ever recorded. Written by Tom Douglas, it's on a par with "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." Transformations, turnarounds, realizations and reflection are at the heart of Pure BS. That's not to say that there aren't the trademark Shelton rollicking country-rock tunes here; there are, in the aforementioned "This Can't Be Good," "The More I Drink," and to a slightly lesser degree "I Have Been Lonely," with its acoustic and electric guitar shuffles and popping snare drums. But even in these songs, Shelton's ability as a singer (with help from Rachel Proctor on harmony vocals) to get the message across over the music is rather startling. His previous three recordings offered him a solid ground to get this one across. To build on what he's accomplished as an artist he's reached inside himself to pull these songs off so convincingly. The album ends with "The Last Country Song," written by Shelton and Braddock. It's a stellar, hard-driving country-rock song that offers a very insightful view of how music itself is changing as the landscape changes as corporate interests swallow up the land the music got made on, with help from John Anderson and George Jones quoting from their own songs "Swingin'" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today." Pure BS is the album Shelton's been waiting to make his entire career and gives us an absolutely stunning new view of an established artist who is here to stay.

Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com

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Blake Shelton - Original Album Series (2012) 5CD Box Set

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Blake Shelton is the perfect contemporary country artist. His rich baritone voice allows him to bounce between traditional-sounding honky tonk material, big romantic power ballads, and pure country corn with relative ease, and his singles are usually a welcome thing when they come on the radio. What he isn't, however, is an album-oriented artist, and that's clear on Startin' Fires, his fifth studio release. There's a little bit of everything here, and that's part of the problem. Between the annoying country-smart glibness of the opener, "Green," to the tries-so-hard-to-be-cute duet with his current girlfriend Miranda Lambert on "Bare Skin Rug" which closes things out, there are only a couple of times when anything here really catches fire (despite the title). One of those times is the song "She Wouldn't Be Gone," which is a brilliant portrayal of a man who finally finds his passion and love for a woman when it's way too late and she's already gone, and the chorus swells to passionate, almost white-knuckle perfection. It's a great song and Shelton gives it everything. Unfortunately, it's also far and away the best thing on Startin' Fires, and with the possible exception of the clever and purposefully ironic "I Don't Care," another ballad about love long gone, Shelton doesn't hit that level of emotion very often here, and this from a man who sang "these days when I turn on the radio, it's just not the same thrill" on his debut album in 2001. Everything here is professional and well recorded, sure, and Shelton's voice is always a joy to hear, but the material just doesn't quite seem strong enough. Wait for the greatest-hits collection and hope "She Wouldn't Be Gone" is on it. It will be, by the way, because it's that good, and it shows how much talent this man really has when he gets a song equal to it.

Steve Leggett, Allmusic.com

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Blake Shelton - Original Album Series (2012) 5CD Box Set

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